What is work passion? It turns out, this isn't just a vague idea—there’s a wealth of research on what makes people truly engaged in their work. This podcast is drawn from a study (DOI: 10.1080/1359432X.2019.1703680).
Research + AI = This insightful discussion!
Because understanding what drives passion at work isn’t just interesting—it’s essential for building a fulfilling career.
Abstract:
Passion for work has become increasingly valued, as reflected by its ubiquity in popular and empirical discourse. Yet we lack scientific consensus on the definition of work passion, and a reliable, well-validated measure of work passion that is relevant to workers across various vocations. In this paper, we identified and integrated key themes from existing scientific conceptualizations into a precise definition: Passion for work means to strongly identify with a line of work that one feels motivated to engage in and derives positive affect from doing. We developed a 10-item Work Passion (WP) scale, which we tested across multiple studies with a total of 858 adults, including working adults from two different English-speaking cultural backgrounds (i.e., United States and Singapore), and a two-wave study of employees from various vocations. Our results showed that work passion is associated with a host of beneficial outcomes, including greater career commitment, lower levels of job burnout, less work-home conflict, and fewer physical symptoms. Our research (1) provides an integrated definition of work passion, (2) offers a reliable, cross-culturally tested scale, and (3) highlights important implications for work outcomes associated with being passionate towards one’s line of work.
Source: Patricia Chen, Fiona Lee & Sandy Lim (2020) Loving thy work: developing a measure of work passion, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 29:1, 140-158, DOI: 10.1080/1359432X.2019.1703680
